What You Can do To Keep Your Subaru Reliable.

all right so recently i've been seeing a lot of blown up engine posts on facebook and instagram for some reason and i don't quite know what's going on out there now i've made videos in the past saying hey you guys should get these parts for liability mods will definitely help keep your engine alive a lot longer however i've never made one describing what you can just do to keep your ej alive or your fa this can be said about any subaru engine or any engine in general to prolong its life and hopefully mitigate any blown up like blow up job blow up jobs that your engine may do so let's talk about it today now one of the biggest problems that i see plagued the subaru community and this is not at fault of the ej but primarily bad ownership is problems going left untouched and then people trying to tune on top of those problems creating bigger underlying problems i'm talking about maybe you just got a wrx maybe you just got an sti maybe it's got a brz i don't know i don't care what subaru it is they they're all going to react fairly similar to this if you buy a car and it has underlying issues like a misfire oil leaks power steering fluid leaks coolant leaks anything oil and coolant mixing you have to take care of those problems before you even progress with modifying the car it's going to create bigger issues later on and it's going to come up and it's more likely just going to completely grenade your engine depending on what the severity of the underlying problem is i'm talking carbon cleaning on any direct injected subaru fa-20s fa24s as those are going to be coming out you don't have port injectors so you're not going to be cleaning the backside of the valves you're going to get a lot of carbon buildup however that's just going to lead to poor performance reduced miles per gallon and less fun when you're driving the car some of the bigger ones that i see are misfires a lot of people let misfires just kind of go or they just kind of leave them lingering until the problem gets so severe that it starts to create other issues misfires are easy to fix you guys if you do have a misfire it's probably it's either spark or fuel sometimes it can be air but for the most part spark or fuel spark plugs pull your plugs check them real quick super spark plugs are not that hard to check after you've like gotten your rhythm down of how to pull them out i can get the plugs in and out of this car in about 20 minutes now but then again i also removed a lot of things that were in my way of doing so uh the spark fuel start troubleshooting like figure out where the problems are coming from another big one i don't really see this too often but oil changes sometimes i've seen let go a little bit too far i think the longest oil change i've seen someone do is like 9 000 miles ideally i would suggest doing them around 3 000 whether you're wrx or sti fa-20 or ej uh your your car is just gonna be a little bit happier with you these cars burn oil they get hot they consume oil it doesn't hurt to do that 3 000 mile oil change it's going to make your car a lot happier or just check your oil if you feel like your car is consuming oil it's a turbocharged car they're going to consume a little bit of oil it's natural i'd say belts but i don't see belts too often timing belts are a big one i haven't really actually have seen timing belts get let go and people not change out timing belts change your belts accessory belts that's just going to give you a headache and it's just going to annoy you if an accessory belt snaps but the timing belt is the big one hundred thousand miles or ten years those belts will degrade over time if you don't drive your car that often you kind of let it sit in the garage um and it's been ten plus years and you're still in the original belt get that changed but like it's just basic maintenance stuff make sure you guys are knocking that stuff out next up is proper warm-up of the car these are not your dad's or your grandpa's buick regal okay you got to let them warm up a little bit a lot of people tend to go off of the gauge on the dash that's reading off of your coolant temperature of the car that's not primarily accurate ideally you'd like to go off of oil temp if you can at least see a small ryzen oil temp before you start driving the car that's going to be more beneficial granted most cars don't come with like an oil temperature gauge that you can monitor it never hurts to put one in the car it also allows you to just see what the car is doing if you're like taking it out for a spear to drive taking it out to the mountains you're going to play with the car hard oil temp is a big one to consider like faraday just throw the key in here let it prime make sure it's in neutral and then start it oil test cold as hell it's cold as hell you want to let your oil tap warm up a little bit at least before you just start mobbing so i can only harp on this one so much because i've talked about it in the past but quality parts and buying the right parts i see and i continue to see way too often people trying to cheap out on parts i understand modifying cars is expensive i understand that you want to save a couple dollars here and there but when you start buying all these cheap parts you're going to run into more failures with the car because the parts are not either the parts aren't going to live up to the expectation that you're setting them to the lifespan of the part isn't going to meet what it should be meeting like i've seen people buy like second hand parts are totally fine as long as they've been like injectors for one example if they're old injectors that you're buying off someone else you want to make sure they're flow tested properly sized and not damaged o-rings you can easily replace o-rings on injectors that's not something that's like a huge worry but i've seen way too often people buy way too cheap of exhaust manifolds they crack they break you don't realize your car has an exhaust leak afr's start getting all sorts of funky and weird um you lose boost it creates other issues and then the underlying problems continue to exist and get worse just just nut up buy the quality part if it takes you a little while longer to save up for it in reality if you look at it you can buy like a cheap set of headers off of ebay or a header for like i don't know 500 400 just wait the extra month or two if you're saving up money putting a little bit of side here and there buy the quality parts ets killer bee grim speed i don't care as long as it's a proper brand that has a reputable and good quality put behind them secondly don't stop this the madness needs to stop with this mix and matching of parts and not understanding how ots tunes work ots tunes are not awful they are not the end of the world however you guys need to keep in mind that if you're using like a cobb ots stage 2 plus or stage 2 sf you need to only be using the cob parts listed in the map notes for that ots tune or else your car is not going to be happy subarus are rather temperamental at times when it comes to tunes and the parts that you throw on them if you're using a cobb ots tune and you're using a grim speed intake that grim speed intake is not scaled properly to be reading on that cob ots tune afr's are going to be thrown off if you have a fully catalyst we'll say nvidia downpipe and you're using a cobb tune it is not scaled properly you guys need to make sure that you're using the proper parts for these tunes that's one of the huge detrimental things these aren't even things that like you have to go out of your way to buy like if you do decide to go down the rabbit hole of modifying your car make sure that you're just using the parts that are listed in the ots tunes if you decide to get an e-tune or a protune that's totally fine just make sure that they're from a reputable tuner who also knows what he's doing too many times have i seen people who think they can tune and they've tuned like five cars and then they go out and they try to tune other people's cars and then their cars blow up because they really don't know what they're doing so make sure you guys are getting the proper stuff taken care of like go to a reputable tuner if you're using an ots2 and make sure the parts match the map notes same with map because a lot of you guys asked me about map staged tunes i guess you could call them map like map notes just read the map notes in the tune and they'll tell you exactly what parts to get and no you cannot run a boost controller on an ots tune quit trying to do that alright subaru nerds let's talk about stock blocks because a lot of you guys want to make power on these things and it's all right to an extent and yes i know bader makes a lot of power on stock blocks but most of us aren't going down that rabbit hole now understanding your stock block is something that a lot i feel like a lot of people don't fully grasp to give you guys a brief rundown 2004 to 2018 sti short block i like to call them the popsicle stick engines because you never know if you're gonna get like a somewhat strong one or if you're gonna get a weak one the 2019 plus sti and the type ra sti come with this short block which is the type ra short block now the type r a short blocks are known to hold a lot more power however if you're going to modify your stock block subaru and try to shoot for the moon on it don't be surprised if one day you wake up and it decided to take off without you and send a piston straight to the atmosphere i'm joking normally it's just like rod knock or spun bearing or something like that but understanding the limitations of your stock block is it i don't want to say it's going to prepare you for the future but it's going to prepare you to understand like the limitations and the capabilities of these engines yes like it like we said you can definitely push these things as far as you are comfortable with but remember this is not a built engine it's pretty much cast internals it's open it's semi-closed deck oh semi-open deck however you want to look at it glass half full class fmd on that one but understand the limitations and the capabilities of your engine before you just try to throw modifications at it and hope for the best understanding how the modifications you're putting on the car affect the engine is going to greatly benefit you when it comes to planning out your parts list and trying to figure out how you want to modify your car which i guess that's another thing i'm going to like caveat on briefly is before you even start modifying the car know what you want to do with it if you're trying to make a drag car that's entirely different from trying to build a street car or trying to build like an autocross car or a time attack car they're all going to be built different it's the same platform another important one that can be taken with a grain salt because i don't want to cause you guys anxiety with your access ports is make sure that heavy knock is being monitored knock is incredibly detrimental to not only ejs but all engines essentially what's happening is you're getting detonation when it's not supposed to happen that detonation then destroys the gas layer protecting the crown of the piston and protecting the valves and then you get a lot of heat that goes in there and that's when things can start melting and then if you get a lot of it and it's uncontrolled and you're not paying attention to it that's when you can end up with something like rodnock if you can catch knock early on via your access port then you're going to be able to keep this thing alive longer it's not just about how you modify the car but it's also about how you monitor it and how you are keeping an eye out on things it's kind of like it's kind of like your child yes you hate it at times but yes you'll love it a lot more at other times and you want to make sure that it has a long and healthy life so being able to monitor those knock signs is a huge thing to be able to do and if you guys do want more information on like what to monitor with knock i'll link somewhere in like this little screen area of the video what to monitor on your accent like the complete access board guide video i did because it covers all that stuff so this next one i've mentioned it in the past before but try to avoid getting hard like on the car when your iats are high if you're sitting in traffic if you're in summertime in the desert of arizona and for some reason your car's been parked on the side of the road you're getting ready to do a poll try to let your iats get down before you start hammering on the car that's going to go back to the whole knock thing that we just talked about when you're introducing a lot more hot air into the engine it gets a little bit more difficult to control knock that's why whenever you go out and start tuning or anything like that you may see the tuner letting the car cool down a little bit here and there you don't want super hot iats in the car i see and with this like if you're running a stock location turbo setup you know if you're running any turbo setup like this this will heat soak after a while even though it's rotated even though the intakes kind of push away over here the exhaust manifold is still underneath of this down below the car so this still will heat soak so it doesn't matter if you have a stock location turbo rotated turbo try to get some type of shielding around your intake that way it gets cool air directed to it and you're trying to keep away all that hot air we want to minimize knock as much as possible that's one of the big things with these cars and that's something that you can do as you're going through and modifying your car is just make sure that you're not getting heavy on the throttle when your iats are straight up through the roof because that's not what we want and speaking of which another one that i've seen that can potentially lead to premature wear is hammering on the car 100 light to light i've seen locally i see this a lot with wrxs and stis amongst other cars out there as well but red light 100 throttle poles i don't understand hey you're in traffic so you shouldn't be doing it anyways but b going 100 on the car for short intervals of time puts a lot of wear and a lot of stress on it when you're going 500 feet to the next red light you have no need to get to 28 psi by the next red light i understand if you're like running someone a little bit and you're out in mexico or something like that you're doing like a couple quick pulls but i see this all the time where just driving around town from light to light to light to light people are hammering on their cars like there's no need for it and you're putting premature wear on everything hey you're sucking in all those high iats because you're going fast stopping sitting in a light letting everything get hot and cook again and then you're setting it again let things cool down a little bit there's no need and you're just killing like fuel there's no need for that now last one i got for you guys is just fuel make sure you that you're getting a quality fuel i've seen people put like 87 and 89 in their wrx wrxs their stis i really wouldn't advise it the lower octane rating you go the increased chance that you have of getting more knock and knock is the biggest thing that we want to control in these cars so that way you're not getting that detonation that's going to be destroying the crown of the piston or destroying the face of the valve so you don't want to burn a valve seat you don't want to burn a valve you don't want to kill your piston you don't want to break your ring lens it's the high heat and the cylinder pressure that's going to destroy your engine being able to make sure that you have good fuel is going to help minimize those knock readings so these are all things like some of them yes as you're going through the car modifying it keep this stuff in mind if you're just going to be driving the car around try to keep these things in mind as well like even if you're staying stock like good fuel don't hammer on the car when your iats are through the roof in the summertime like right now we're going into winter so that way the ambient temperature is a lot colder so it is going to help a little bit but these are just some things that you can just do like you don't have to buy any of this stuff up until you're going through the modification process even if you're staying stock you can do a lot of these things just out of habit when you're owning driving and playing with the car but hopefully this helps reduce the amount of blown-up engine posts i see online here in the next i don't know the future the foreseeable future because i don't want anyone to blow up their engine because it's just a it's not a fun thing to go through it gets expensive quick if you can't reuse a lot of the things depending on the severity of the the blow up job we'll just call it the blow up job but i mean that's really all i got for you guys on this one so hopefully this video helps like explain and understand things a little bit better with subarus they're just like any other car out there you just they they're just a little temperamental at times all right they just like to throw fits here and there but that's all i got for you guys on this one so if this video helped you if you liked the video go ahead hit that like button turn it black blue green yellow purple silver cyan whatever color it turns for you and if you're not already subscribed to the channel and you want to be i'll put it in one of these corners no idea which one quite yet but with that i will catch you guys in the next one which actually might be modifying the the golfer that we just picked up so peace out homies [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: Smeedia

Views: 261,281

Keywords: Subaru, Subaru WRX, Subaru WRX STI, JDM Subaru WRX, Subaru BRZ, Scion FRS, Toyota GT86, STI, WRX STI, JDM STI, Subaru Youtuber, Smeedia, Subaru Youtube Channel, Tanner Smith, Smedia, Subaru STI Channel, Subaru STI Videos, How to keep your sti reliable, reliability, FA20 reliable, EJ20 Reliable, How to keep your subaru reliable, how to make your subaru reliable, how to keep your subaru healthy, healthy subaru, Subaru engine blow up, blow up job

Id: xcJN-JNcdEU

Length: 15min 40sec (940 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021